Writing the book that will help traditional brick and mortar businesses move to a progressive internet marketing plan

Internet Marketing Metrics: Why They Will Change The Face Of Business

by Joe Manausa, MBA on March 28, 2011

I once had a great platoon sergeant in the Army who continuously reminded me that “you cannot expect what you do not inspect.” Because of this, we had checklists for everything that we did, and all of our mission critical gear, personnel, and actions had an inspection protocol.

This style of management is well suited for an internet marketing campaign. Because actions are performed electronically, it is easy to develop “push” based reports on internet marketing metrics that are delivered in real time to upper management. But here’s the rub….

subordinates and subordinate managers only prioritize the actions and activities that upper management inspects.

The CEO of tomorrow will be a champion of the internet, and will maintain company performance metrics on the tip of his or her mind at all times. Subordinates of the super companies will prioritize these because of the leadership provided from the top down.

Key Metrics For Tracking Web Activity

When setting up the processes for gathering the metrics that a company uses to evaluate the performance of a website, the prudent web marketer always starts with the end goals in mind. Too often, we hear about pagerank, traffic counts, form submissions, etc., but what about sales?

Everything that we do within the category of internet marketing should be designed to increase sales and profitability to the company.

While this statement might seem like a “no brainer” to readers who have not run a company (or the marketing arm of a company), the fact is that we get overwhelmed sometimes and lose sight of the target. There are so many ways to get out of focus, especially when third-party vendors want to sell us thousands of different tools promoting internet marketing.

By tracking key metrics for your internet marketing efforts, you will be able to keep the focus on driving profitable business to and through your company website. I feel so strongly about measuring and maintaining these metrics that the next few posts will highlight some of the key internet marketing metrics.